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Teach Your Kids How Not to Get Mugged in Minecraft

Beth Blecherman is founder of TechMamas.com, a site that curates information on family technology. Her new book "My Parent Plan" applies her years of technology project management to helping parents make their own plans. Follow her at @TechMama.

Web monitoring and filtering tools have long been central to our family technology plan, keeping the house clean of content inappropriate for our three boys. When my older son reached the age of 13 and he and his friends started accessing the Internet through their mobile devices, I realized the controls we put in place were no longer sufficient.

Kids are going online via mobile in huge numbers. Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project says 78% of teens ages 12 through 17 have a cellphone, with nearly half of those being smartphones. That means the rules you set up at home, that controlled and filtered environment you created, no longer apply.

While I wish I could be a Net Nanny, protecting my kids from all the online safety dangers, I realize I now need to help my kids be their own best defense. For us, that's achieved by having daily online safety talks with them...it's the new birds and the bees talk. Here are some of my tips — please share yours!

Have regular online safety talks

I decided to use the concepts of gamification with my teen son by first explaining our family rules and expectations for online and smartphone safety. I then asked for his feedback, encouraging all questions, both simple and complicated. Our daily “game” is pretty straightforward. I ask him what he saw online that day, and I reward his sharing with positive feedback. I try to find times during the day when my teen is relaxed to have our safety talk, like when we're in the car or taking a walk.

One day, he explained that he wandered onto an inappropriate site via a link from a friend. He explained his strategy for trying to “vet” things that are inappropriate and I provided a few tips to help this effort. I always tell him that he'll make mistakes, but it's important to learn from them and have a strategy in place to make sure they don’t happen again.

It is also important that he knows the logical consequences of inappropriate behavior. Having his phone or laptop taken away for a period of time — or even worse — shutting down his cell service to only allow emergency phone calls, is a pretty strong deterrent.

Be the parental control expert

Our talks center around a review of the online sites and apps used by my son and his friends. Since the list changes frequently, we examine the parental and privacy controls for each site or app and agree on what controls should be put in place.

For example, his stream on Instagram is set to “private” instead of public and he only allows real life friends to follow him. He understands while it may seem fun to meet “new” friends on Instagram, that could be very dangerous. With Facebook, privacy settings were set when he first established his account and updated regularly as Facebook implemented changes.

Negotiations are frequent. For example, my son wanted to keep his Facebook timeline open to not only friends but also to friends of friends. My preference — requirement — was limiting his timeline to only friends and always including me as a friend. I also insist all private Facebook messages need to be respectful and not include personal information.

In the end, he agreed to add me as his Facebook friend, and in return I agreed to discuss with him offline if I had issues with something on his timeline, instead of commenting online where his friends could see it.

Use the sites your kids use

When my son told me he was a big fan of the Reddit “funny pics” sub-directory, I went on Reddit myself to see what else was lurking there. I was shocked to see some of the “WTF”, fetish and sub-directories (called subreddits) with topics completely inappropriate for kids. When I talked to my son about it, he said he had seen the WTF directory but wasn't going there because it was obviously something that would get him in trouble with the "family police".

We discussed the disturbing images he saw and figured out how to adjust Reddit preferences to avoid them in the future. I insisted he not check the preference "I am over eighteen years old and willing to view adult content" and check "no" when it asks, "Are you over eighteen and willing to see adult content?" We also checked "label posts that are not safe for work (NSFW)" as another indicator of what to stay away from.

Danger zones

Every site has a potential danger zone, even Minecraft, a game known for being creative and fun. My son found its darker side, as I learned in one of our chats. He told me he was on the Minecraft server with PVP (player versus player) when someone not only killed his Minecraft avatar but also stole all of the items in his inventory.

"You got mugged in Minecraft?" I asked. Worse, someone had posted in the public chat area, "Teleport to me for free diamond or other items". He took the bait and found himself in a massive fight where all the players were trying to kill each other.

It's a cruel world out there, and just like explaining to your kids why they have to safeguard their items in real life, the lesson applies to Minecraft too. His chest is now locked and he's no longer playing on servers with no PVP. Lesson learned: there are no free diamonds either in Minecraft or in life.

We're going for trust as the basis of our online safety system, while reinforcing communication and being open to negotiation. While this system isn't perfect, we think we can navigate the sometimes dangerous waters of the mobile Internet stronger as a family.

Do you use online safety controls for your mobile kids? What dangers have you discovered regarding the online sites they use?

This post is part of a series on the dilemmas of raising digital kids. We'd like to hear some of the parenting issues technology has raised for you. Please let us know in the comments, or on our Mashable Lifestyle Facebook page. You can also follow and tweet us @mashlifestyle.

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